The hermeneutics of suspicion and human empowerment: a textual and practical evaluation

View/Open

Date

Author

Metadata

Abstract

English: Elizabeth SchUssler Fiorenza is the main and most prominent proponent of the
Hermeneutics of Suspicion. This hermeneutics has as aim the liberation and empowerment of women and other subjugated groups, and starts from the base of the Biblical text. Texts must be interpreted in the same way as a murder scene in order to find traces of lost voices and clues which will enable the liberation of marginalized parties. Texts must also be read against their androcentric grain in order to glean new meanings that have not before been proclaimed to the religious community. The hermeneutics of suspicion consists of four main movements/steps: suspicion, remembrance, proclamation and creative imagination and actualization. Suspicion entails the reading of a text with lenses coloured by suspicion, and a critical close reading against the grain of the androcentric text. The step of Remembrance teaches women and other readers to remember their past and the work and struggles of parties that have gone before them. It furthermore encourages readerslwomen to remember the voices of the Biblical parties that have been silenced by the androcentric grain of the text. Proclamation involves the declaration that all texts that do not enable the liberation of women and other marginalized groups, are not the Word of God but the words of men. Creative imagination and actualization gives people the opportunity to bring the text to life by means of poems, plays, paintings, songs, etc. Despite the fact that Fiorenza's hermeneutics is well-known in academic circles overseas, it is limited to small academic communities locally. At the University of the Free State, for example, there is no chair for feminist theology - this despite the fact that it is one of the fastest-growing fields within theology today. The ordinary lay believer knows little to nothing about this theology, and is never given any exposure to its tenets. In this study I wanted to test whether Fiorenza's hermeneutics is teachable to a group of lay believers, whether such believers are interested in this hermeneutics and whether it can change the way they read the text. I furthermore wanted to test the principles of this hermeneutics on the text of Old Testament narratives, since Fiorenza herself works mainly with the New Testament. Fioreza is additionally Catholic, and it had to be tested whether her principles, especially with regards to her step of Proclamation, were acceptable to a Protestant audience. The result of this practical evaluation is listed in detail in the work, but in short amounts to the following: 1. The audience it was taught to was able to grasp the principles of the hermeneutics of suspicion, but it was found that it takes time to assimilate these principles into the reading strategy to such a degree that it becomes a natural way of reading the text and the world. 2. The audience was not willing to concede that texts that do not work liberation in hand are words of men and not the Word of God. 3. The hermeneutics of suspicion could successfully be used on the narratives of the Old Testament, and the questions stencil I developed to aid in this process was able to greatly simplify this process for the lay reader. The ordinary Afrikaans, middle class, female believer has little knowledge or awareness of her religious heritage and resultingly suffers unknowingly under the same inherited piety of her foremothers. She has progressed little towards liberation in the past 100 years. The hermeneutics of suspicion can aid to combat this situation, but time is needed to incorporate this into the religious every-day life of the lay believer.